


Simulacra And The Differential Diagnosis Procedure

by checkerbee



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Background Relationships, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other, POV Outsider, Revenant Being Revenant (Apex Legends), Therapy, discussions of trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29352477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkerbee/pseuds/checkerbee
Summary: This is not the first time that Amanda Linden has had a simulacra in her office and she imagines that it won't be the last, but it is certainly the first time that one has ever sat in her chair."You're late." He says. "And your shoe is broken."AKA: The fic where Revenant sees a therapist.
Relationships: Bloodhound & Revenant (Apex Legends), Bloodhound/Revenant (Apex Legends), Revenant & Wraith | Renee Blasey
Comments: 36
Kudos: 96





	1. Ground Rules

Amanda Linden is never late.

In fact, if you were to ask any of her colleagues down the hall, they wouldn't be able to think of a single time they'd ever seen her hurrying toward her office instead of walking at a normal pace. She always arrived at ten am and left at six-thirty pm with breaks at twelve, two and four-fifteen respectively and she never returned from any of those with anything less than a minute to spare. 

Unless, of course, you counted today.

Today, Amanda Linden was late. 

It's only by a minute or two, but it's still out of the norm for her and that grates at her in a way that she has examined many times in her own professional capacity. Amanda Linden does not like being late, she does not like having to hurry and she doesn't like the way her broken heel makes her gait uneven. 

So she's thinking about being late and she's thinking about her broken shoe that she bought at a discount and only has herself to blame for it breaking on the first day that she wears it, really. She's thinking about these things and looking at the waiting room that she has just shuffled jogged her way to and she is finding that room empty. 

"Okay." She puffs, because her waiting room is empty and her last appointment for the day was supposed to start one or two minutes ago. "Well then."

Unbuckling her shoes, she slips them off and pads to her office to make a phone call out to her last appointment. She'll need to apologise for being late and try to reschedule and while that's something that she's never done before, she imagines that she can get through such a conversation without ever having to mention broken shoes. 

Now, another thing that all of Amanda's colleagues down the hall know is that she's very particular about her office. She has three chairs because two feels like too little and four feels like too many, but one of those chairs is hers. She does not share this chair because it is behind her desk and adjusted to just how she likes it. 

No one else sits in her chair and no one ever has. 

But when she steps into her office, there is someone sitting in her chair. 

One thing that is not uncommon in the Outlands is for pilots to seek out professional help, especially once the war had ended and both sides found themselves abandoned in what would have to be their new homes. Among those pilots were individuals that took more care than others in terms of professional therapeutic help and Amanda keeps that in mind as she closes the door behind her. 

This is not the first time that Amanda has had a simulacra in her office and she imagines that it won't be the last, but it is certainly the first time that one has ever sat in her chair. 

"You're late." He says. "And your shoe is broken."

_ I am _ , Amanda thinks,  _ and it is _ , but she does not say that because that is something that they both know. "You're in my chair."

"Am I?"

"Yes." For a long moment he stares at her and she stares at him and in that moment she feels not unlike a prey animal looking at a predator with very sharp teeth. 

She clears her throat, sets her heels down beside one of the guest chairs and sits. Her guest chairs are not comfortable or adjusted perfectly for her, but she sits and does not show that she is uncomfortable doing so. 

"And now you're sitting in my chair." He says and Amanda has the very distinct realization that this seemingly unimportant situation with each of them sitting in the other's chair is a test.

"Am I?" She asks, settling in more. She isn't sure what the purpose of the test is, but her best guess with the non-existent data that she has is that he wants to see how far he can push her before she pushes back. Based on this lack of data and the fact that she does not know him well enough after only a handful of minutes to form any professional opinion on the interaction however, she can only wait and see. 

One of the biggest misconceptions that there are about therapy is that therapists form opinions quickly and spend the majority of their time working through how to treat a diagnosis that they give to a patient in their first few sessions together. The reality is actually much different, she finds. Much like how each individual person is complex and works at their own specific pace in terms of dealing with trauma, professional help for that person reflects that complexity. 

So she has not had the time to form an opinion of the man before her, but she has had the time to build a healthy mental image of herself, and she knows that she would very much like to have her chair back. 

"Would you like your chair back?" She continues when he does not respond and she watches him settle just like she had. 

"It's a chair." He points out as if it doesn't matter whether or not it's his, as if the thought of her sitting in his chair does not bother him. 

"Then you don't mind that I'm sitting in it?" 

"Should I?" 

_ Should you? _ She wonders, but what she says is, "We can sit how we are for this first visit." 

What she does not say is that this is the only time she will be late and therefore give him the opportunity to sit in her chair. 

"I think this is going to be our only visit." He tells her and Amanda thinks back on their conversation so far. It isn't uncommon for a therapist to not be a good fit for their client and it isn't uncommon for that therapist to refer that client out to a colleague that is better suited for them. But she has not had enough time with him to find out if they do not, in fact, fit together, so she isn't sure how he has come to that conclusion himself.

"Because of the chair?" She hedges and he growls, actually growls, at her before standing and stalking toward her. 

Amanda Linden is first and foremost an academic. While life in the Outlands can be harsh and require an understanding of how to fight back should you ever need to, Amanda has never put much effort into it. Her job pays well and her life is comfortable and she has yet to find herself in a situation where she would need to defend herself, much less against someone that knows how to hold his own in a fight. 

She thinks of all of these things as he approaches her and she realizes that her belief in her own safety on a day to day basis does not mean much when she is in a room alone with a person that she does not know. 

"I don't give a shit about the chair." He tells her and she realizes two things very quickly. The first is that while he was across the room and sitting, she had no way of knowing just how intimidating his full height is and that he is a lot bigger than her first impression led her to believe. The second is that he does actually care about the chair quite a lot, because they have taken the time to establish it as his and he doesn't want her in it. 

"Okay," She says and gets out of his chair. As soon as she does, he folds into it in a way that she can't really describe as sitting. It's more akin to a large metal spider crouching in its web, but she supposes that if it's his web, she can't really critique him on it. 

Leaving her shoes for now, she reclaims her own seat behind her desk and gets truly comfortable for the first time since she set foot in the room. This is a set up that she's familiar with, one that she can work with, and she leans into that familiarity like a well worn coat. 

"We haven't had a chance to introduce ourselves yet. My name is--" 

"I know who you are." He cuts her off. "I set up the appointment, didn't I?" 

There are some instances in her line of work where the patient isn't actually the one to reach out for help. Sometimes it is parents or doctors or other therapists with a referral, but it isn't always the client themself. She has no way of knowing if he did or didn't without looking at her file and she makes a habit of not doing that during visits. Before, after, sure, but she doesn't like the clinical impression that reading through a file gives and avoids doing so if she can help it. 

She does not share these thoughts with him though, because they are not important for him to know and they do not achieve anything toward the relationship that she wants to build with him. They are unimportant and she sets them aside in her mind as such.

What is important is that he knows her name and thinks that that is all there is to know about her. 

What is important is that she knows his name and knows that there is much more for her to learn about him. 

"Your name is Revenant and you're in my office for therapy." 

"Did all that schooling make you this smart or are you naturally gifted?" He drawls and she breathes past a sudden flare of anger. "You and Hou--" He cuts himself off and redirects with a tilt of his head. She makes a mental note to ask him why at a later time. 

"You have no clue who I am." 

"We've only just met." She says instead of rising to the bait of the anger that he's trying to coax out of her. It isn't helpful or professional for her to do so, but she imagines that in any other capacity, she would have given up on this conversation rather quickly. 

"Have you been living under a rock?"

It seems that in the last few minutes, Amanda has lost the thread of this conversation and she isn't sure how.

"Should I know who you are?" 

For a moment, she expects him to growl again. She expects him to unravel himself from his chair and try to intimidate her like he had the first time he didn't like something she said, but instead he surprises her by leaning forward to study her and, after a minute or two of silence that makes her hair stand on end, he laughs. 

"No wonder you're not shitting yourself." He snorts and she makes a point of not wrinkling her nose at the thought. She rather likes her skirt and she imagines that the stain of that would be a nightmare to get out. 

"I haven't done so since I was potty trained." 

He laughs again and it is not a pleasant one. In fact, it grates on her nerves just like her broken shoe had.

For a therapist that prides herself in being as good at her job as Amanda is, she has little patience for broken things. Some would think that this would make her bad at her job, but Amanda has never really subscribed to what other people believe of her. And she has yet to come across something so broken that it cannot be rebuilt into something just as good as the first. 

"That wasn't that long ago for you, I take it."

She bristles before she can stop herself, feels her mouth curl into a frown, and he makes a satisfied sound. 

"That's better." He hums and loosens his posture. 

"Is it?" It's a redundant question, because she can see that her display of distaste toward him has caused him to relax, but she wants to know why. 

Of course he does anything but tell her. "I don't like being lied to." 

"I don't recall lying to you." 

"Not outright." He says and she scrambles for a moment, analyzes their conversation for a second time. 

"I don't--" 

"Use your brain, doc." 

Another second, she thinks as she takes a deep breath in and pushes her annoyance aside. 

"I think we should set some ground rules if we're going to continue our sessions." She begins and holds a finger up when he makes a sound of annoyance. "I'll list mine and you can list yours and we'll go from there." 

"I don't like you." He says and she resists the urge to tell him that the feeling is mutual. She is a professional and a good one at that, she wouldn't be if she insulted her clients when they did their best to annoy her. And she has the feeling that this is nowhere near his  _ best.  _

He tilts his head as if he's well aware that she doesn't like him either and finds that to be the most interesting thing she's done so far. "But go on if it'll make this go any faster." 

"Okay," She breathes and pulls out a piece of paper from her desk. "So, ground rules." 

He waves her words away and she clicks her pen. 

"You don't like being lied to." She writes that down. "That's doable for both of us. I won't lie to you, but I ask that you be honest with me in return." 

"You have no way of knowing if I'm lying to you or not."

She does not point out that she can say the same for herself. She does not need to antagonize her client. She does, however, need to make a point. 

"I'll trust you not to, if you'll trust me not to." She waits for a nod before continuing and he reluctantly does. "Next, and this is important, I ask that you don't insult me." 

"Are you allowed to insult me?" He asks and she has a feeling that he doesn't care for the answer as much as he does the opportunity to get a word in.

"I don't see why I would." 

"If honesty goes both ways, I don't see why insulting each other shouldn't." 

_ Not insulting each other,  _ she corrects in her head. 

"That's fair." She says and writes it down. "Is there anything else you want me to put? Keep in mind that we can always add to the list as we go." 

"Don't touch me." 

He says it with such conviction in his voice that she pauses, lets her pen go slack a little. She files it away with his aversion to dishonesty. 

"If I have your permission, is it allowed? Or is there a hard boundary there?" 

He grunts, plants his feet on the floor and she straightens up in response. "Why would I give you my permission to touch me?" 

"In case of an emergency or if you needed it, am I allowed to touch you?" 

He mumbles her words back to himself, picks them apart as she sets her pen down. She thinks that he'll say no, that he'll cut off this potential line of contact between them, but eventually he catches her gaze and holds it. "Fine. I won't need your filthy little mitts on me though." 

She looks down at her manicured hands, looks back up at him and raises a brow. "We said no insulting each other." 

He snorts, examines his claws in a mockery of her previous gesture before letting them click against his knee. "Is that all?" 

She looks at the clock on the wall, analog and old and passed down from her great great grand-something. "I think we've set up a good basis for future sessions. If you'd like to continue?"

"Whatever." 

She waits for a better answer, one that actually gives her an idea of his feelings on the matter. Professionally, she understands the avoidance, because it means that he won't have to commit to an agreement with her. He can fall back on his non-answer if he's ever pressed on the matter. 

However, his cooperation is not something that she wants to force. Despite his apparent need for therapy --and why would he be here in her office, in  _ his  _ chair, if he did not need it?-- the decision to continue to see her is entirely up to him. 

She explains as much to him, lets him hum and haw until he falls silent, and waits. 

And waits.

Until finally, the spider-like way he's been holding himself dissipates and he sits in his chair properly. 

That's a start, she thinks to herself with a smile.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not trained in psychology and can only write this story from my own personal experiences when it comes to therapy. Please do not consider this anything more than a work of fiction on my part. 
> 
> With that being said, thoughts?


	2. Deferential Treatment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amanda Linden does not make a lot of progress with Revenant over their first few sessions.

Amanda Linden does not make a lot of progress with Revenant over their first few sessions. 

This is at no fault to either of them and something that she expected to happen, but even with her understanding of how slow of a process therapy can be, she can't help but find herself a little bereft. 

Amanda herself is a woman that values time and effort. Revenant, she finds as the weeks stretch into months, values neither of these things. 

She learns that he has, in his opinion, too much time in his day and that that fact is not a pleasant thing for him. She learns that he does not like to give a straight answer if he thinks doing the opposite will prove amusing. And she learns that he rarely, if ever, opens up to someone that he does not trust. 

She has yet to earn his trust and she is not sure how to do so beyond operating as she normally would, so for now they are at an impasse where she attempts to gain information and he does his best not to give her any. 

"I think we should focus on dishonesty today." She says as he rolls a glowing orange ball across the back of his wrist. She does not like the ball and she is not sure why. If she were a woman that valued science any less, she'd say that she doesn't like it because of the chill that shivers down her spine whenever she sees it. Her mother would say someone was walking over her grave, but her mother is a superstitious woman. 

Amanda Linden is not a superstitious woman and it is only a glowing ball, so she turns the heater up in her office to combat whatever draft seems to have gotten in. 

It is winter after all and more likely than not, the cold of the season has started to get to her. 

"Haven't we done that enough?" He asks, because they have. They have talked about dishonesty quite a lot in the last few weeks, along with a myriad of other topics, and he has yet to give her an answer with any kind of significance. 

"You said that you don't like being lied to." 

She watches the glowing ball go up before falling back down into his palm as he tosses it. 

"I don't." 

Another toss, another shiver up her spine. 

"You felt that I was being dishonest in our first session." She continues and he hums, tosses the ball again. She clenches her fists in her lap. 

"You're lying now." 

Now, despite Amanda Linden's firmly established sense of self and her rigid idea of how she likes the world to function, it is rare that she runs out of patience when it comes to other people. She finds that she often holds herself to a standard that is much higher than the one she sets for other people and is therefore much more lenient when it comes to people that aren't herself. 

That being said, after two months of getting nowhere, Amanda finds herself running out of patience for the first time in her professional career. Instead of expressing this, however, she bites back whatever emotion that wants to show itself on her face, loosens her fists, and presses her palms flat against her knees. 

"Do you want to be here?" 

The ball stops as his attention shifts to her for the first time in their session. "No." 

"If you don't want to be here, then why are you here?"

In her years as a therapist Amanda Linden has found that there are times when you need to take a more direct approach with a client. There are times when a client is unable or unwilling to open up on their own and the therapist's job becomes both a lot easier and a lot harder. 

It becomes easier because the therapist gets to focus on one specific topic and guide the conversation as they see fit to get the answers they need in order to progress the session. But not all clients respond positively to this guidance and it is the therapists job to keep their client from feeling that they are being pushed to disclose information that they are not ready to give. 

Amanda Linden gets the feeling that Revenant is going to be the kind of client that is both unwilling to share and resistant to careful guidance. 

Amanda Linden gets the feeling that Revenant very much likes the idea of wasting her time until she gives up on him and he can leave while saying that he tried. 

Unfortunately for him, Amanda has quite a lot of pride in her work and no intention of giving up. This inevitably brings her back to sitting in her office and waiting for an answer to a question that she isn't sure was even heard in the first place. 

She does not repeat herself, however, because she does not want to push him any more than she has to. So she waits as he studies the ball that's idly spinning in his hand and has the feeling that he is not actually seeing it all. 

She spends her time thinking over what she'll have for lunch, wonders if there's a market within a reasonable distance to her office where she can get an apple, and she waits for him to process her question. She is fine with waiting. She hopes that she can get an apple because she hasn't had one in quite a while. She keeps her attention on her client. 

"I'm here," He begins, stops when his voice box clicks, starts again. "I'm here because I have to be." 

Amanda thinks of the closed door to her office, thinks of the closed blinds that keep the sun from shining on her computer screen, thinks of the man before her who is not made of flesh and bone like she is. 

Amanda Linden gets up, walks around her desk, and opens her blinds. 

It is winter and he is her last appointment for the day. It is winter and getting later in the afternoon and the sun is setting. It is winter and the sun is setting and the last rays of it bathe her office in an orange-red glow. 

Returning to her desk, she folds her hands into her lap. 

"You told me that you scheduled your first appointment." She pauses, thinks over her words before she says them because he has given her a straight answer for the first time. It may not be much, but it is still a sign of trust on his part. She very badly wants him to trust her with his care. "Was that a lie?"

"I don't like lying." He says as if she is exceedingly slow. They may have settled on an agreement to not insult each other in their first session, but she has learned since then that he is very good at calling someone an idiot without actually saying so. 

People are complex, Amanda thinks. "Someone can not like something and do it anyways." 

He makes a noise and gets up and she braces herself for his anger, but he ignores her completely and goes to the window instead. He goes to the window and stares at his reflection in the glass and she gets the feeling that he very much wants to break it. 

"I'm here because I have to be here." He repeats and she understands that he is not talking about her office. 

"Okay," She says.  _ Thank you for trusting me _ , she thinks

As a therapist, Amanda Linden is well aware of how to recognize certain behaviours in her clients. These behaviours are not always obvious and they are not always said out loud, but it is the job of a good therapist to see these behaviours and find out the cause and severity behind them. Doing so is usually easier said than done, but a good therapist knows how to, because their job is just as much about minimizing risk as it is about identifying those risks in the first place.

Amanda Linden is a good therapist and her client does not want to _ be here.  _

Leaning back in her chair, she considers the path forward. She'll need to find out what's causing this state of mind and how to remove that stressor from his life. If it can't be removed, which seems likely given that he doesn't seem the type to not deal with something that annoys him swiftly and ruthlessly, then she'll need to help him develop a way to mitigate that stress. 

The most important part of a therapist's job when dealing with a client in a high-risk state of mind is clear and honest communication for both the client and herself. The most important part of a therapist's job when dealing with a client in a high-risk state of mind is minimizing risk and emphasizing that help is available for him if he is in need of it. 

She breathes, gathers her thoughts and watches his reflection in the window. Her blinds are open and he is standing in front of her floor to ceiling window and he does not want to be here. 

"I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like a clear answer if you can give me one." She tells him as she takes a form out of her desk. 

She does not need to have the form out, because she had memorized it a long time ago, because her focus is on him and not the form, because she is a good therapist and her client does not want to be here. 

He grunts to show he's listening. 

"Have you developed a recent feeling of apathy or lost interest in activities that you normally enjoy?" 

"No." 

She waits for more but he doesn't give her any, only turns and leans his back against the window. He crosses his arms over his chest and she moves onto the next question. 

"Have you told anyone else about the feelings you're currently experiencing?"

"You're going to have to be a little more specific, doc." 

"You don't want to be here." She leads and he leans forward slightly, fixes his gaze on her like he's trying to see inside her head. He laughs and it feels like a slap. 

"That's old news that everyone knows." 

"I didn't know." She points out. This conversation is not going how she expects it too, but that's fine. People are complex. 

"That's because you live under a rock. Well… You live in Solace and you have no idea who I am. That's close enough." Straightening up, he tosses the ball into the air, catches it, tosses it again but this time he aims it at her. She catches it and he hums. The ball is warm in her hand and spins lazily as chills break out over her skin. She does not like holding it. 

"You want honesty, doc?" She nods. "The only reason I'm here is because I have no other option. You're going to ask your questions to see if I'm planning to off myself and you're going to imagine me chucking myself out this window that's just enough stories up to be fatal if I do and you're going to tell me that there are  _ options.  _ But there aren't any, I've gone through all of them and none of them work." 

In the time that Amanda Linden has been a therapist, there has been a shift in how professionals such as herself approach clients to make up for the growing demands in their field. Just as it always has been, human understanding of just how the brain functions is elusive at best. People are complex, their issues are even more so, and the behaviours that arise from these issues or traumas throughout a person's life have been found to change how the mind responds to situations that are seemingly normal to seemingly normal people. 

That is to say, trauma has lasting effects on a person and professional therapists such as Amanda Linden have barely scratched the surface of just how significant those effects are. In terms of therapy this is an unfortunate realization due to the fact that in the early twenty-first century, it became common practice to treat each client not as an individual but as a diagnosis. A diagnosis is easy to categorize and understand, it is easy to give and even easier to treat if one were to consider treatment as only a management of symptoms. 

It wasn't until very recently that this system of therapy changed yet again to focus on the individual. Professionals that have been in practice as long as Amanda Linden has have the unique hurdle of being both classically trained in a diagnosis-focused approach, and later, in a method that focused on the client first and foremost. 

Amanda Linden is a good therapist, but even good therapists fall victim to the very human trap of familiarity. Amanda Linden is a good therapist and she is trying to treat a diagnosis instead of an individual and that is not something that good therapists do.

"What do you think I'd mean if I were to tell you that there are options?" Because it is obvious to her now that they have a very different understanding of what his options are.

"Shouldn't that be obvious?" He asks as he straightens up from the window and she is reminded that she still does not know who he is. If she has learned one thing about him from their sessions so far, it is that something that is obvious to him can be a complete mystery to her.

"I do live under a rock." She reminds him and this time when he laughs it does not grate on her nerves like her broken shoe once had. This time when he laughs, it is because he wants to, not because he wants to make her uncomfortable. 

"I can't die." 

She taps her nails against the form on her desk. "Everything can die." 

"You would think so, wouldn't you?" He snorts, returns to  _ his  _ chair and sits with his feet touching the floor and his hands in his lap. He looks relaxed and to her, that is the most important development in their relationship so far. To her, seeing him relaxed after only two months is more important than any diagnosis she could give him. 

"So you can't die." She allows. She pieces together what he has told her and she paints a picture in her head. "But you have tried and eventually you ran out of options." 

"Truly all of that schooling was worth the money." 

They may have come to an agreement on not insulting each other, but much like she falls back on her own old habits as a therapist, it seems he can only hold in a petty remark for so long. 

Getting up, she goes to the cabinet and grabs a jar. It's a plain one that she bought in bulk with the idea that one day she'd make use of them, only for them to sit in her cabinet and gather dust. She wipes the dust off with a tissue, removes the lid and sits it on her desk. 

"What are you doing?" He asks as she pulls the abandoned form from her desk and cuts it into strips. She cuts those strips in halves and then halves again until she has a collection of scrap about two inches in length and he watches her the whole time as if she's lost her mind. 

"I'm creating an insult jar for you. I'll give you a piece of paper at the beginning of each of our sessions and instead of insulting me out loud, you can write it down and put it in the jar." 

"I know that you skinsuits go senile, but I thought the warning signs would show long before you comepletely snapped."

"Har har," She hands him a slip of paper and a pen. "You're two-for-two so far." 

"You're way too comfortable in your assumption of who I am." He says as he scrawls something onto the paper. 

"You're my client." She shrugs. "Until you tell me anything more, I'll treat you as I would any other client of mine." 

This is another important thing that Amanda has learned, although this knowledge has less to do with her profession and more to do with the fact that she is wholly and unremarkably human. People have the tendency to believe far too strongly in how special they are. This is not meant as an insult or a negation of how unique a person can be, but rather an observation and understanding that this belief toward specialness can lead to one feeling that they deserve suitable deferential treatment from others. 

It is a very common form of narcissism that every person has and it is a double-edged sword as far as she is concerned. People are complex and yet despite these complexities, Amanda Linden strives to treat all of her clients with the same level of care as the last. 

Revenant is no exception to this rule, even with the knowledge she now has, but he is the only one of her clients to ever sit in her chair and he is the only one with an insult jar. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I do want to keep the overall tone of this story lighthearted, I will be convering Revenant and the sensitive topics associated with him more in depth as we progress. 
> 
> With that, if you are in the USA and need someone to talk to, you can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255
> 
> Please keep yourselves healthy and safe and I will see you in the next chapter.


	3. Bitter Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amanda Linden has been a therapist for fifteen years and has had an office in Solace for ten of those years and this is the first time she has ever wanted to strangle one of her clients.

Amanda Linden has been a therapist for fifteen years and spent ten of those years operating out of Solace. She began her schooling and her career on Gaea because Gaea was a reasonably safe place to do so, but she moved to Solace because she wanted a challenge. She moved to Solace because Solace was not a reasonably safe place and its inhabitants were people that she felt would benefit from her help more than Gaea would. 

Operating an office in Solace has led to a lot of experiences that years of schooling did not adequately prepare her for and Amanda Linden has done her best to handle these experiences in the best way she can. She has been yelled at and threatened, she has been flirted with and propositioned, she has had to call SARAS on actionable threats to her clients lives and walk her clients through the steps of hospitalization afterwards. 

Despite the bad that goes hand in hand with her job as a therapist, there is also good that can come from it as well. She has been invited to the wedding of a widower that never thought he'd find love again. She has bought a housewarming gift for a pilot that feared building a home after having to abandon her previous one. She has celebrated her clients successes at school and work and in life when it was previously thought those successes were out of reach. 

Amanda Linden is a therapist with an office in Solace and after fifteen years of work in her field, it is rare that she runs into an experience that she can label as new. Despite this, her clients have a way of surprising her and she considers that to be one of the best things about her job.

Revenant, or really the situation he finds himself in, surprises her. 

One of the things that Amanda focused on in her schooling was how to guide a client through the inevitability of life's trials and, ultimately, how to deal with death. It is a human experience that every person shares and in a place such as Solace, death can be both familiar and incredibly daunting. Therapy with a focus on existentialism is something she is familiar with. 

So how does Amanda Linden, a professional therapist with a focus on existential psychology, offer help to a client that cannot die? 

The answer, Amanda Linden knows, is that she helps by doing her job the same way she would with any other client. The answer, Amanda Linden knows, is that she helps by putting herself into his world through the experiences he shares with her and gives him the tools he needs to process those experiences in a healthy way afterwards.

The problem with this approach is that Revenant does not talk about his experiences with her and any information she gains from him is the result of long hours on her part and accidental slip-ups on his. 

"You're quiet today, doc." He says as he scribbles on a handout she gave him at the beginning of their session. 

The point of the handout is for him to make a list of the things that he feels he needs help with and for them to go over the list together afterwards. While she normally only reserves this kind of approach for her younger clients, she has to admit, at least to herself, that she is running out of options when it comes to getting him to open up. 

It has been three sessions since he brought up his inability to die and despite several attempts on her part to get him to talk about this particular aspect of his life, he has remained as tight-lipped about the whole thing in the same way that he has about everything else. 

Amanda Linden is a therapist with fifteen years of experience under her belt and this is not the first time a client has been reluctant to talk to her.

One important but often unspoken fact about therapy is that a therapist's relationship with their client is an intimate one. This is not using the term intimacy as it is normally understood, with the idea of sexual closeness being at the forefront, but rather intimacy as a familiarity or close understanding between two people. A therapist's job, first and foremost, is to build a relationship with their client and in order to do that, they need to get to _know_ their client as an individual. 

Now, it is not uncommon for clients to have an issue with intimacy. There are a myriad of reasons for this, but the most common that Amanda Linden has found during her career is a fear of self and a fear of others. 

In Amanda's experience a fear of others is easier to manage in terms of relationship building. A client may feel that allowing her to grow close to them makes them vulnerable to exploitation, abandonment, manipulation or pain. For those that have had a deep trust in another person shattered and especially for those that have experienced pain at another's hands, this kind of vulnerability is not something to be taken lightly and not something to be rushed. But by allowing a therapeutic relationship to grow and by nurturing that relationship in a healthy way, she can then prove to her client that her desire to get close to them is not from a place of ill will towards them and she can help them rebuild from there. 

While a fear of vulnerability with the expectation of imminent harm is not uncommon, a fear of self can be harder to deal with and much harder to identify as it stems from a belief that one is not worthy of intimacy. The reason behind this can be just as varied as it is in a fear of others, but typically falls under the client's belief that they are in some way unacceptable or unforgivable as a person. Getting to know them and gaining an understanding of what the client feels makes them so undeserving of intimacy and continuing to accept them regardless of these faults is the best approach that she has found. 

In regards to Revenant, Amanda Linda has no clue if his aversion to allowing her into his life is due to a fear of himself or a fear of her, but she is completely sure that he has not filled out the handout that she gave him at the beginning of their session. 

_This isn't working,_ she realizes. 

"We're not making any progress here." She says. 

He stops scribbling, studies her for a long moment before humming dismissively, and she is reminded of the fact that she does not like him all that much.

"And here I thought we were really getting somewhere. After all, it's been a long time since I've had the chance to express my _artistic talent."_

"What I mean," She begins, takes a moment to bite back her irritation at what she, in her professional opinion, considers a failure on her part toward her client. "Is that I can't help you as your therapist if you do not open up to me as my client." 

"Are you asking me to cooperate with you, doc?" He asks in a tone that is far too beguiling for her tastes. 

When Amanda Linden was younger, she often got sick due to a combination of her own immune system and a lack of suitable resources to raise a child on her parents' part. This isn't to say that she was neglected. In fact, her early life was a happy one and her family was loving despite a shortage of money with which to keep her comfortable and healthy. The downside to this was that she was a child prone to illness and her mother often had to give her medicine that she found to be absolutely vile. In order to get her to actually take her medicine, her mother would often cover the taste of it with honey or jumperberry juice and it wasn't until it was halfway down her throat that she realized that she had been tricked. 

Revenant's tone reminds her very much of swallowing something sweet and finding something bitter under that sweetness. 

"That's exactly what I'm asking." She tells him, because she is not a little girl anymore and she understands that just because something is bitter, that does not mean that it is bad for you. 

"Okay." 

_I'm sorry, what?_

"Okay?"

He tosses the paper onto the chair that is not _his_ and twirls the pen she gave him through his fingers. "I was wondering when you were going to grow a backbone." 

Amanda Linden has been a therapist for fifteen years and has had an office in Solace for ten of those years and this is the first time she has ever wanted to strangle one of her clients.

After eleven sessions of noncommittal answers and half-hearted conversation and trying so very, very hard to find a way to engage her client in his own therapy, Amanda has finally been given a glimmer of success and she wants nothing more than to walk out her office, go to the communal fridge in breakroom and yell into the freezer that Maggie from down the hall uses to store her her frozen eclairs.

However Amanda is a professional therapist with fifteen years of experience under her belt and so she takes a deep breath, smiles a little too sharply and says, "Thank you." 

He snorts. "Don't get too excited." 

Oh, but she is. Amanda Linden has spent eleven sessions getting absolutely nowhere with her client and she is _excited_. 

"Where do you want to start?" 

"If you want to be boring about it, we can start at the beginning." He says, but Amanda does not consider that boring at all. Fitting, cliche, but not boring. "I like starting at the end more." 

"Then we'll start at the end." 

They do not start right away. In fact, they do not start for quite a while as Revenant seems to sort through his own mind for an appropriate beginning to his story. This does not bother Amanda Linden however, because she has waited eleven sessions for her client to open up to her and she doesn't mind waiting a little longer. 

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a man that worked for the Syndicate by the name of Kaleb Cross. Kaleb was a mercenary and a good one at that and Kaleb liked being good at his job even if the work itself wasn't all that pleasant. Because he was so good at his job, he was called on a lot to handle jobs that other mercenaries in the Syndicate's employ weren't typically trusted to handle. This ranged from employees that had betrayed the organization to political figures to wealthy individuals with enough security to prove a problem. 

This particular job that Kaleb was asked to do fell under the latter, but in all the years that he had worked for the Syndicate, he had yet to fail an assignment that was handed to him. A failed job meant a dead mercenary after all, and Kaleb was very much alive. So he accepts the job to kill a wealthy man with enough security to be a problem because that man had gotten on his bosses' bad side and Kaleb is a good little mercenary that does what he's told. 

The job itself isn't hard and the security doesn't prove to be as much of a problem as previously thought because the man is having dinner with his family in a restaurant and restaurants are always easy to get into. All you have to do is sneak in among the wait staff or set off the fire alarm or break a window, and ta da, you're in. So he deals with the security and he goes for his target, but before he reaches him, he gets shot. This is not the first time that he's been shot and it certainly isn't the last, but if you've ever taken a bullet to the shoulder, you know how much it hurts. 

When he gets shot, he thinks two things in rapid succession. The first is that it fucking hurts and the second is that he somehow missed one of the wealthy man's bodyguards and that is not something a good mercenary does. But when he turns and looks, it isn't a bodyguard that had shot him at all; it was the wealthy man's wife. She's holding the gun and she's watching him take aim and she looks just as shocked as he feels at finding her as the person that had shot him, but that does not stop him from pulling the trigger. After all, if she shot him once to protect her husband, she'd do it again and Kaleb did not like the idea of dying just because _honey dearest_ knew how to use a firearm. 

So he shoots the wife and looks for the wealthy man and finds him running toward the elevator with his daughter in his arms. 

Now, when Kaleb originally got this job, he was asked specifically to make the wealthy man suffer because the man had stolen something from his boss and, in his boss' eyes, made a fool of him. So Kaleb watches the man carry his daughter to the elevator and he watches him pry her off while telling her that he loves her and he thinks that's awfully sweet. Touching, really. 

The problem with making the man suffer is that it takes a while and Kaleb's shoulder fucking hurts so he doesn't really care all that much about how he gets his job done, just that he does. He gets paid either way and to be honest, his boss is a dick anyways.

Remember when I said that getting into a restaurant was as easy as breaking a window? Turns out that getting out of one is even easier. So Kaleb takes the wealthy man by the throat and shoves him through the window and thinks of all those shards of glass racing that little girl in the elevator to the bottom. Kaleb's boss wanted the man to suffer, but Kaleb's shoulder fucking hurts and Kaleb's boss is a dick. It'd be so much easier to snap the man's neck and be done with it, so that's what he does, before letting the man's body join the race between the glass and the little girl in the elevator. 

Naturally, the glass wins. That's just how gravity works. All except one of those shards reaches the bottom before the wealthy man's body and the little girl in the elevator. That one left out piece of glass happens to be buried in Kaleb's neck and I don't know about you, doc, but it's not very pleasant to catch sight of your reflection and see a piece of window sticking out of you.

Despite this, Kaleb's first thought isn't to pull the glass out. No Kaleb's first thought is: Where's my tongue? Up until this point he had been sure he had one, but despite clearly being able to feel the pain in his shoulder, he cannot feel his tongue in his mouth. Did he have one? Of course he did, but somehow, he seems to have lost it. 

And then he sees it, like a frame wipe on a tv screen or a glitch in a computer. There's a face looking back at him from his reflection and it isn't his. He's seen this face plenty of times before, in his nightmares and in the dark corners of his room before he went to sleep at night. He's seen this face with it's glowing orange eyes and its red tear tracks and its skeletal features and he is struck with the realization that this face is his face and that he is seeing himself clearly for the first time in his own reflection. 

He pulls the glass out and he does not die and the face from his nightmare does not change. 

And he thinks, for the briefest of moments, of joining that little girl and her wealthy father in that race down to the bottom. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't decide whether or not Rev is a good storyteller.


	4. Professional Flaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amanda Linden has been a therapist for fifteen years. She has always valued her sense of professionalism above almost all other things in her life and she has just insulted her client to his face. 

Amanda Linden is a professional therapist. She has been one for fifteen years and lived all forty-three years of her life in the Outlands. She is not old by any means, but she is not young either and she likes to believe that she has lived a good life. Amanda Linden is forty-three years old and she knows that she has so much more of her life to live. 

She imagines having her life cut short in a year and despite her focus on existential psychology, she cannot wrap her head around it. Objectively, she knows that the Outlands are a harsh place. Objectively, she knows that there are many people that do not live to be forty-three and that there are many more that do. 

The Outlands are a harsh place and Amanda Linden has lived in them all of her life. 

"You said that that was the end," She begins once Revenant's story has concluded. They have sat in silence for the past few minutes as she collected her thoughts and he has grown restless with that silence. "Why?"

He shifts in _his_ chair, plays with the glowing orange sphere and does not look at her. She thinks of a fear of others and a fear of self and cannot place him in either. "It was _an_ _end_. There are lots of them and more get created every time I get tossed into a new body." 

"Then why chose that one to tell me?" She asks because Revenant has been her client for eleven sessions now. In nearly three months the primary thing she has learned about him is that he is very good at sharing both completely mundane and incredibly important information without ever telling you which is which. He may not like lying, but he is more than comfortable with spinning a web and watching as you struggle your way through it. 

She thinks of him sitting in his chair like a large metal spider in their first session. She thinks of him calling her a liar when she has not lied to him. She thinks of him standing in front of her floor to ceiling window and knowing that he wants to break it. She thinks of him pulling a shard of glass from his neck and not dying. She thinks of him not dying and becoming something from his nightmares. 

She thinks of all these things and she wants to understand. She thinks of all of these things and she does not understand at all. She does not need to though, because what she does understand is that the story he has told her is a part of his trauma and that trauma is the reason he is in her office. 

"Do you know how Simulacra are made?" He asks instead of answering her question.

"I can't say that I do." 

He hums. "They're made by creating a copy of the brain and storing that copy in a program. Everything that makes them who they are becomes a series of binay, those ones and zeros get uploaded into a frame like this one and ta da, a Simulacra is born. The first was a different matter though, but firsts usually are. It's hard to get something right when you have no clue what you're doing." 

Revenant is not the first simulacra that Amanda Linden has had in her office and she doubts that he will be the last, but he is certainly the first one to ever talk to her about the mechanics behind his existence. 

Her previous clients have talked to her about the phantom pains that their new bodies cause and the shock of finding metal where flesh should be. They have talked to her about being in pain when reasonably, realistically, they shouldn't be. They have talked to her about the adjustments they have had to make to their lives and the modifications they have made to themselves in an attempt to retain their identity. They have talked to her about experiencing death for the first time and not wanting to repeat that experience a second time.

Revenant is not the first simulacrum that she has had in her office and she doubts he will be the last, but he is the first one that cannot die. 

She thinks of firsts that are flawed because it is hard to get something right when you have no clue what you're doing and she  _ understands. _

"You were the first." She realizes and he laughs. 

"And only." He runs a finger over the slip of paper that she gave him at the beginning of their session for the insult jar. It is still blank and his pen is sitting abandoned in the chair that is not his _.  _ "At least I'm the only one that was made the way I was. They figured out pretty quickly that keeping my brain preserved to keep me going was a lot more work than simply uploading it into a body and moving on, but by the time they did, they had already created a bunch of spare frames and hidden them all over the place." 

"How long ago was this?" 

"Why doc, don't you know that it's rude to ask someone their age?" He drawls, but his posture has relaxed more now that his story is being met with curiosity instead of silence. Despite the fact that he is sharing more with her than he has in all their sessions so far, his body language is open and trusting and she realizes that he was preparing himself for a rejection on her part. 

She can't ever imagine him saying so outright and she knows that bringing it up would be met with an end to the trust he's placing in her by opening up, but while she collected her thoughts and he waited in silence, he became very much afraid of what she would say to him once that silence was broken. 

_ Fear of others it is then,  _ she thinks as he drops the glowing sphere back into the compartment in his arm. Not for the first time, she wonders what it is and what it's for. She still doesn't like seeing it and she has yet to examine that discomfort, but given that she has held it in the palm of her hand before, she doubts that it's dangerous. 

"Besides," He continues, interrupting her thoughts and bringing her attention back to him in time to see him begin to write on his insult slip. "You're the last person I'd ever want to take to dinner." 

_ Oh, fuck you too,  _ she thinks. 

"The feeling is mutual." She says before she can catch herself. 

The most important part of being a therapist is the relationship that you build with your client. Your job after all, is to nurture that relationship and use it as a bridge with which to help the person in your care. Despite the importance of this relationship and the intimacy it inspires however, a therapist must never forget that they are a professional. 

Amanda Linden has been a therapist for fifteen years and she has always valued her sense of professionalism above almost all other things in her life and she has just insulted her client to his face. 

For a moment, her heart drops into her stomach. For a moment, her entire career flashes before her eyes and centers on this moment and freezes her in place. 

And then Revenant snorts out a truly unattractive laugh that is nothing like the ones that she has heard from him so far. It's an honest laugh, an  _ ugly _ laugh, and it does not fit the image she has of him at all. He laughs and he does not get angry at her slip in professionalism. He delights in it instead and she thinks of all the times that he has called her a liar when she bit back her annoyance with their lack of progress. She thinks of these things and realizes that her slip up has not hurt their therapeutic relationship. Quite the opposite, because she is being honest about how she feels about him.

Recentering herself, she holds the insult jar out to him and glances up at the analog clock that was passed down from her great great grand-something. 

"Thank you for what you've shared with me today." And when she says it, she  _ means it. _

In Amanda's experience, there are clients of hers who find a show of appreciation toward their progress to be hollow or condescending. It is not a normal or common thing in their lives for an expression of their feelings to be met with positivity --or any emotion, for that matter-- because people rarely take the time to thank someone for sharing a problem with them instead of trying to immediately fix that problem. Unfortunately this need to fix a problem as soon as it is expressed is a very human thing, so when they  _ are  _ met with affirmation, they react with either suspicion toward her or indifference toward her words entirely.

Revenant, she learns when he waves her words away with a dismissive sound, falls into the second of these two categories and that is fine. So long as he doesn't respond negatively, she will continue to thank him for the progress he makes until it becomes something less foreign to him or until he asks her to stop. 

"I thought we were getting somewhere and now you're just ruining it." He says, but there isn't any malice in his words. He still sounds amused and he still looks relaxed and Amanda counts that as the win that it is. 

"I am a professional, after all." She reminds him and she is. That is something that she prides herself in, something that she holds close to her chest because she worked hard to get where she is. It is also the wrong thing to say and she watches Revenant stiffen in his seat, watches him study her and remind himself of exactly who she is. She watches as he draws a metaphorical line in the sand between them and she wants very badly to take her words back. 

Amanda Linden is a professional therapist and that is the reason that he is in her office, that is the reason that he is in  _ his chair,  _ and that is not at all what he wants.

The relationship between a therapist and their client is an intimate one, but not in the sense that people often think of when they hear the word  _ intimacy _ . A therapist's job first and foremost is to build a kinship with their client, but they also have to remember that the relationship they build is not a friendship. This may sound cold, but it isn't. Amanda's job is to be there for him until he no longer needs her help and if she were to let a mutual friendship grow between them, the balance there shifts. 

Amanda Linden is a professional therapist and she has just caused her relationship with her client to regress by reminding him of that. 

But she cannot take her words back and she cannot change his reaction to them, so she has to move forward. In order to do this however, she needs to go back to the point where their relationship initially shifted in his eyes. 

She thinks back to the beginning of their session together, thinks of the lazy apathy he had displayed and the mocking tone he had taken until she had asked him to be straightforward with her. He had still been distant after she asked, had still been scornful of her, but he had told her his story of a man named Kaleb Cross that was good at his job and was proud of that fact. He had told her the story of a man named Kaleb Cross that was so good at his job that it led to him becoming the monster from his nightmares. 

She also thinks of what he  _ hadn't said _ , of the way he had held himself while telling his story. Of the way he had dug his claws into his knees when talking about Kaleb, the way his eyes had narrowed and his head had tilted in as close to a sneer as he can get when talking about his past self. 

She understands in this moment that he does not view Kaleb in a good light, that he regards him the same way that an adult would view their teenage years, with contempt and embarrassment and the knowledge that they cannot fix these faults in their previous character. She takes these faults and she examines them and realizes that he is applying these same faults to her and finding her just as lacking as he does his past self. 

Kaleb Cross was good at his job and he was proud of that fact, but ultimately, that pride was his downfall. That pride is, in part, the reason that he is sitting before her today with a reflection that he wants to break and the belief that he has no options left. 

"I'm sorry," She says, because her pride is not so strong that she cannot swallow it in an attempt to repair what she has broken. "I misspoke."

"Did you?" He asks, even though they both know the answer. 

"When you come here, you place your trust in me with the expectation of my help. You share parts of yourself with me and it's my job to treat those parts with respect. Intentionally or not, I didn't do that just now, so I'm apologizing." 

Her words are met with silence as he studies her face for some sign of dishonesty and then--

And then he makes a sound that's oddly reminiscent of a yawn and asks, "Are you done yet?"

A thought hits her so suddenly in that moment that she feels as if she's been smacked across the face with a brick. "I do have one other thing to say." 

"Oh, goody." 

"This is me speaking as a professional," She begins and she watches him carefully the entire time she speaks, waits for him to stiffen again or show a sign that she is crossing over that proverbial line in the sand. "You're an asshole." 

With any other client of hers, this declaration would have been met with outrage. With any other client, she wouldn't have said it all. But with this client, in this moment, it is exactly the right thing to say. The previous tension bleeds out of him completely as he flicks his insult slip into the jar she handed him earlier and holds it out to her to take back. She does so, sitting it on the corner of her desk to be stored in her cabinet before she leaves for the day, but he clears his throat. 

"If I have to write my shit down like a kid with bad behavior, so do you." He says, so she takes a slip of paper, writes down a quick thought, and tucks it underneath the jar for safekeeping. 

Later, when their session is over and she is wrapping up her day by updating her clients' files in her computer, she unfolds that scrap of paper and reads the words she wrote to herself. Much like his insults are directed at her, her own is directed at him in return. Hers is not an insult, however, but a single sentence that she knows he won't like to hear but needs to anyway. 

_ You are doing well.  _

No, she thinks, he wouldn't like to hear it, but that's fine. She can wait until he's ready, until their relationship is stronger and more grounded. For now, she slips the piece of paper under her keyboard and returns his jar of insults to her cabinet for the weekend.    
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amanda's figuring it out, slowly but surely.


	5. Missed Appointments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revenant has been her client for eleven sessions and he has missed his twelfth.

Amanda Linden has been a professional therapist for fifteen years and in that time, it is not uncommon for her clients to miss an appointment with her. There are countless reasons; struggles with transportation, plain old forgetfulness, a lack of motivation to leave the familiar comfort of their home, illness or injury, et cetera. 

She has had cancellations and no shows and emails apologizing for wasting her time that always make her heart twist in her chest. These last ones, she treats with care, assures them that it is okay to take the time that they need, that she will be waiting for their return if they choose to do so. 

She receives no such notification for her last client of the day and every check of her voicemail is met with an automated voice telling her that there are no new messages for her to listen to. 

She checks her email and assures Maggie from down the hall that no, she did not eat her frozen eclairs. 

She waits the designated fifteen minutes that she gives all her clients before making a call to reschedule the appointment that they were unable to make. 

_This is Dr Amanda Linden calling for Revenant to remind you that our scheduled appointment for today is set at four forty-five. If you are unable to make this appointment or would like to reschedule for a later date, please give me a call back._

She checks her email again and checks the analog clock that was passed down from her great great grand-something. 

Revenant has been her client for eleven sessions and they have made progress that she is proud of him for. Revenant has been her client for eleven sessions and he has missed his twelfth.

…

When she leaves her office that day, she is not expecting to find anyone in her waiting room. 

On occasion, she runs into one of her colleagues as they make their way home for the evening and they share a quiet elevator ride down to street level before exchanging pleasantries on the way to their cars. On occasion, there is a MRVN making the last of it's cleaning rounds and she doesn't have to waste her time on pleasantries at all. She likes these times better, but either would be less confusing than locking her office and turning to find a woman leaning against the back of one of her waiting room chairs.

"You need better chairs." The woman says and Amanda takes a moment to study her. There's a knife at her belt, but her posture is relaxed, arms folded over her chest and shoulders curved in as if she's trying to appear smaller than she already is. And she is small, or short really. Amanda is at least a head taller than her, especially with her heels on.

"I'm sorry, I'm heading home for the evening." Amanda begins. "But if you're here to set up an appointment, I can give you my business card and we can talk in the morning." 

"I'm here for a friend actually. He's a patient of yours and missed his appointment today." 

One thing that the medical community got right in the early twenty-first century was their policies on patient privacy. There were quite a few of them actually, but the focus always centered around the release of a client's private information, whether intentional or not. Even in the event that a third party were to know a patient or client, it was not in a practitioner's best, or even legal, interests to discuss that patient or client with someone without that client's express consent beforehand.

These rules have changed a lot over the years and the laws that went with them have yet to be extended to the Outlands itself, what with many institutions in the core systems having yet to migrate to the outer edges after the wars, but she keeps them in practice for both the safety and privacy of her clients. 

Revenant has not filled out an information release form with her yet and she keeps that in mind as she moves to sit in one of her waiting room chairs. 

"I can't really confirm or deny that I had a client that missed an appointment today, Miss…"

"Blasey." The woman sounds uncomfortable when she says it, as if the name is a bit foreign to her, and a part of Amanda goes on high-alert. If the woman in front of her is lying, she's not very good at it. 

"I'm not lying to you." The woman, Blasey, says and if anything, that only makes Amanda think that she's lying even more. 

"I never said you were." 

"Listen, I came here to tell you that Revenant will be back for his next appointment. He put my number down under contact information, so your voicemail came to me." She holds up a communicator and wiggles it as if to support her statement. "I know you have patient confidentiality or whatever, I just wanted to deliver a message so that he'd stop bitching at me."

"Thank you. If I were to ask, hypothetically, of course, if my patient that missed his appointment today was okay, what would the answer be?"

The woman raises an eyebrow at her. Amanda is well aware that they are the only two people in her waiting room. She is also aware that they are talking about the same person, but there are times when things need to be said a certain way for her own peace of mind.

" _Hypothetically_ , huh?" But Blasey plays along and Amanda breathes a sigh of relief that she understands what exactly is being asked of her. "He's fine, just more of a dick than usual, but that's normal after a death." 

"I'm sorry, but you said he was okay?" And she does not remember to say _hypothetically_ , because she's thinking of their last session and trying to piece together what may have gone wrong between that day and today. She's thinking of what they talked about and where they had left off and trying to find something that she may have missed. 

"He's fine." Blasey cuts into her thoughts like a bucket of water to the face. "It just takes him time to get his head on straight after." 

Well then. "Thank you." Amanda says while making an effort to keep her heart from racing. She has had calls from hospitals and family members that have left her heart in her throat for what felt like hours after she hung up, and while topics such as this one aren't uncommon in her line of work, they are never ones that she wants brought up at all in concerns to her patients. 

Revenant is no different. Despite the fact that he seemingly can't die and can therefore return to relative normality in a new body, she imagines that doing so is still a traumatic experience for him. From her previous clients, both other simulacra and human survivors alike, she knows that waking from that particular nothingness to find themselves alive is not pleasant by any means. That return to the world can be painful and confusing and leave one feeling guilty or angry, especially if the return to normality for them takes longer or comes with effects that they did not anticipate. 

But Blasey doesn't seem concerned in the slightest, so Amanda takes her charge, at least for now, from her. "Please let him know that I look forward to our next session together."

"Sure." The woman studies her for a moment longer, as if she expects Amanda to ask a question or demand details of what happened. That is not for this woman to tell her, not when he has not filled out the necessary forms, not when her asking feels too much like prying into a life that he has not given her access to yet. 

Instead, she holds out a card with her contact details on it and holds it out for Blasey to take. 

"Please let me know if something comes up before our next appointment." 

Blasey studies the card with a furrowed brow, flips it over to look at the back, then slips it into a pocket beside her knife. "Something like…?" 

"Rapid shifts in mood or uncharacteristic behavior, apathy, prolonged confusion about his surroundings." She tells her. She keeps her tone clinical, informative, and does not let her own feelings on the matter slip into her voice. She is a therapist and her client needs the people in his life to be there for him without any hysteria that strong emotions on her part might inspire. 

"You want me to babysit him?" 

"No, I just want you to keep an eye out for signs that he isn't handling coming back any different than he normally would." Because it may be _normal_ for him _,_ it may be expected by those around him, but that doesn't mean that he won't struggle afterwards. "If he isn't, do what you normally do to get him back to stability and contact me if things get bad."

She pauses, thinks for a moment. "And let him know that I look forward to seeing him next Friday." 

For a moment, Blasey looks uncomfortable. For a moment, she looks like she's trying to decide whether or not to tell her something. Amanda stays sitting in response, doesn't end the conversation and waits for the other woman to come to a decision on what she wants to say. 

A large part of her job as a therapist boils down to body language. It's something that she learned early on in her schooling and something that she applies to her job every day, both for herself and her client. Does the way she holds herself convey that she's willing to listen or that she's distracted or that she wants the conversation to end? Is she coming off as judgemental or too distant or too invested? How are they interpreting her posture and her expressions and applying those reactions to what they're saying? 

On the opposite end of this is what she can learn from them. Are they aloof or focused, uncomfortable or eager to share? Are they hiding how significant something is, good or bad, in an effort to not to overwhelm her? Are they uncomfortable because of her as a person or what her job represents to them? 

This last one she applies to Blasey, not because of their conversation, but because of the way that the other woman has held herself throughout it. Her posture has not changed from that of someone that wants to appear unassuming, but Amanda realizes this display isn't for her sake at all. Something about herself sets the other woman on alert toward her own image and, if Amanda were to take a guess, it's not because she's a threat, like she had originally thought. 

_I'm the threat,_ Amanda realizes as Blasey shifts her weight in discomfort. 

"The offer for an appointment still stands." Because sometimes you have to go out on a limb when it comes to easing other people's perceptions of you. 

Blasey stills, eyes widening in surprise for a moment before the tension in her body bleeds away. "Thank you, but I'm good. I just wanted to deliver a message." 

"Well," Amanda stands and waves a hand toward the hall that leads to the building's elevators. "Let me walk you out at least." 

…

When her thirteenth session with Revenant arrives, he folds himself into his chair in the same way he always does at the beginning of their hour together. She still can't really call it sitting, but it's _his_ chair, so she can't tell him to sit any other way. 

"I missed one session and you immediately started talking about me with other people." Is the first thing he says to her after she sits at her own desk and there's a growl to his voice that makes her still in grabbing his insult slip. For a moment, she feels not unlike a bug stuck to a board as he narrows his eyes and studies her, but then that moment passes and he huffs out an amused sound. "Good job."

She blinks. "I'm sorry?"

"No, you're not." He leans forward and makes a grabbing motion for his slip. She hands it to him. "I was wondering what it would take for you to bend the rules a little, just mad I wasn't there to see it."

"I think that before we continue this conversation, it's important that you know that I didn't release any of your information." 

"If we're being honest, doc, you're way too stuck up to do that." He says and he fully expects his statement to offend her. He's still watching her closely, looking for a reaction, and it reminds her of the test with the chairs from their first session. He's uncomfortable and wants to make her feel the same. They are not here for her however, they're here for him.

She holds out the jar. 

"You missed your last session." 

He folds into himself a little, but not in embarrassment or shame. He withdraws because she is not playing along with his game this time. "I did."

"Did you want to talk about why?" She asks and he sighs, clicks his claws against his leg in agitation.

"I don't." 

"Then we won't." 

He stills. He huffs out an annoyed breath. He scans her face and looks for a lie that is not there. 

"I died." He says and she thinks, _Welcome back._

"Do you mind if I ask how?" She asks and the answer he gives her will tell her how to proceed with their session. 

He tilts his head and taps his claws against his leg again and she realizes that it's the closest thing to a tell from him that she's seen. 

"I took a bullet to the head." He says and there's a thread of emotion weaving through his words that tells her that despite how casually he says it, the experience itself affects him more that he cares to let on.

"That doesn't sound like a pleasant experience," She begins and the bark of laughter he lets out is bitter and sarcastic. 

"I wouldn't recommend it." He pauses, then shifts in his chair and shifts again when that doesn't help with what she can only assume is nerves. Finally, he retrieves the glowing orange ball from his arm and rolls it over the back of his wrist. She lets him focus on it for a few moments, lets him center himself because she knows that he does want to tell her about the experience, but she also knows that talking about traumatic experiences isn't easy no matter how prepared you think you are. 

She thinks that he wants to tell her and that that is a new development for him. She thinks that he is not the kind of person that shares his feelings on things. She thinks that he is the type of person to bottle them up until they get overwhelming and he can no longer handle them. 

She does not know him well enough to know if this boiling over of trauma gets directed onto others or onto himself, but she does know that when people are so used to not talking about their feelings, opening up to someone, even in a controlled environment like her office, becomes its own hurdle to their progress. 

So she sits and she waits for him to decide if he's ready to tackle that particular hurdle with her today. 

"The hard part isn't dying." He tosses the ball into the air before letting it hover in his hand. "The issue is that I wake up afterwards. There's always a new body waiting for me whenever I kick it and now… Now there's someone that waits for me too." 

_Oh,_ she thinks. _This changes things._

"Every time I wake up and see them, I think that I'll be relieved that they've stuck around a little longer, but I just feel angry." 

"Angry at them?" 

His gaze snaps up to her and that anger shines bright in his eyes and lines his body like a spring grown taught. The ball in his hand spins faster. 

"No. I'm not fucking angry with them." 

She does not point out that it is possible to care about someone and still feel anger towards them. She does not point out that this anger does not mean that he cares about them any less. No, she files these thoughts away and asks, "Then who are you angry with?"

"Everyone." He snarls. "I'm sick and tired of being here and I'm angry at the people that did this to me. Every death I used to think that it'd be the last one. I used to have to a shred of hope that all this would end, but then the fucking girl took that away from me and made sure that I'd suffer with that knowledge until I fuck off and put an end to things myself. But that could take decades and they don't have that, so I'm _stuck here_."

"Have you talked to them about this?"

"Oh sure," He says in the same tone of voice you'd use on a child that still believes in fairytales. "I'll just tell them that even though they're one of the only good things in this horrible little shitshow I call a life, I don't care enough about them to stick around until the funeral."

"But you do care about them, so you stay." 

He shreds his insult slip with his claws and she hands him another. 

"They're the reason I'm here." 

And she knows that, for once, he is talking about her office instead of _here._

So she takes what she knows about him and she adds another person, someone that shows him genuine affection, and she realizes that he cannot imagine a world where he is happy enough to do the same for them. She takes his anger and his bitterness and his need to reach an end to his long life and she adds someone that brings out the desire for a reality that is completely opposite from what he has come to expect. 

She does not know what this person is like, does not know if they view the world the same way that he does or if they see something entirely different. But she does know that they see something in him that is different enough from how he views himself that it pushed him to want to change. 

_I can work with this,_ she thinks. 

"Why don't you tell me about them?" She says.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for taking a bit to update, but I made the chapter longer to make up for it. 
> 
> A lot of things get brought up in this chapter as well and I fully plan on exploring each of them in depth in the future. For now, I hope you enjoyed seeing Wraith and getting a bit of Revhound.
> 
> 💙


	6. Dead Plants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In their sessions together, Amanda has picked up on a few things about Revenant that she's sure he does not intend for her to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a non-descriptive recounting of suicide in this chapter. If that's a topic that you find upsetting, feel free to skip the two paragraphs in the chapter that I have bookmarked with an asterisk *

In their sessions together, Amanda has picked up on a few things about Revenant that she's sure he does not intend for her to know. There are tells that he has and reactions that he gives that let her know what topics he finds uncomfortable and what parts of himself he is not ready to share. 

When she asks for his feelings surrounding his trauma, he sidelines with an insult. When she hides her annoyance with him, he calls her a liar and works to further that annoyance in the hopes of getting her to crack. When she does not feed into the negativity that he tries to inspire in her, he sulks as if she's denying him a bit of fun. 

When she asks about Hound, he looks away from her and says, "I'm not discussing them with you." 

He says it like she's unworthy, like she is beneath him, and that is new. For all his insults and metaphorical hair pulling, he has yet to treat her like an inferior. He does not trust her, he does not like her, but he at least respects what she does, if not who she is. 

But he says, "I'm not discussing them with you." And there is a finality to his words that tells her that pushing him on the topic is not something he'd allow. 

So she lets it be. 

"Then we can discuss something else." He relaxes again and she thinks of waters calming before a storm has the chance to break. "You said that the story you told me was an ending, but there was more after." 

"Are you looking for the rest?" He asks and that bittersweet tone of voice is back, like he's trying to lure her in. She does not need luring though, she is well aware that he enjoys spinning webs with his words, but her job is to pick those webs apart and examine the individual strands that make it up. 

"Stories don't end in real life." She tells him and he stiffens in surprise. "There's always something after."

"I once said the same thing to them." 

"Did you believe it when you said it?" She asks because he does not want to talk about  _ them _ , but she has surprised him by reminding him of a moment with someone he cares for. She does not know if that changes his feelings toward sharing them with her, but she does know that she'd rather not weather a storm she does not have to. 

"I stopped  _ believing  _ a long time ago, doc." He pauses, considers his words. "The epilogue to the story isn't pretty. There's no little bow that you can smack onto it or blank page to turn to before the book ends." 

She thinks of his story ending when he realized the reality of his existence. She thinks of what must have come after and all the blank pages he must have filled in the time since. 

"I'd still like to hear it." She tells him and he snorts. 

"Of course you do." He says it like there isn't a doubt there. He says it like he's well aware that she wants to know more, not just because of her job as his therapist, but for her own curiosity as well. 

Her mother had always told her that her curiosity would get the best of her one day, but her mother is a superstitious woman. Amanda Linden is not a superstitious woman and Revenant piques her curiosity. 

So she asks him, "What happened after?" 

* * *

We left off with Kaleb standing in front of a broken window and thinking about jumping, didn't we? Well, news flash, he didn't. At the time I didn't know that I'd survive it. I found that out later, after I woke up in a new body with the phantom pain of a bullet in my teeth. 

You've never died, but I can tell you that it isn't fun. All that the pain and regret comes rushing in all at once. All those little 'what ifs' play out while you struggle to breathe past the blood that's suffocating you from the inside out. Now imagine that feeling of helplessness and fear and multiply it. Not by one or two or even fifty. Multiply it by a hundred, by a thousand and then add a thousand more. 

If you can do that, then you might have an idea of what Kal-- what I felt as I stumbled my way to my apartment. It was supposed to be temporary, an expense for the job and a place to lay low afterwards since Olympus would go into lockdown once the news broke. But I found a replica of my actual apartment waiting for me, exactly the same as a few others scattered around on different planets in the Outlands. It even had the same plant as my original one, although this one had withered into a crumbling husk. 

It was the only thing in the apartment that wasn't a lie though. Everything else? The whiskey in the cabinet and the cologne in the bathroom and the food in the fridge? All of that was just a figment of my imagination, a lie I'd been fed to keep me from thinking too deeply about all the little things that didn't add up. 

Of course this is my apartment, because it has my clothes in the dresser and my toothbrush on the sink and my photo of dear old dad in the drawer of my nightstand. 

So all of this turns out to be a lie. Everything except the thing looking back at me in the mirror and the dead plant in the corner. 

*If you really want to know what happened after, you'll have to imagine another death. You'll have to imagine being in pain, so much that you're numb to it while feeling like every inch of you is on fire at the same time. And you think, desperately, as your eyes fill with tears that don't exist, that you want it all to stop. All that death, all those memories that are suffocating you? All you have to do is put an end to it and that's as easy as pulling a trigger. You've done it hundreds of times before, what's one more? 

So you make it end. Not with a whimper or a cry, but with a bang and afterwards, there's nothing. You think that this is it and then you think absolutely nothing at all.*

_ You  _ are nothing at all. 

At least, you are until you wake up. 

Now imagine all that pain from before, so much that you can't process it enough to feel it, and bring it all rushing back after feeling  _ nothing.  _

I woke to a new body and a new ache behind my teeth where a bullet should have been and all I felt was anger. I wanted someone to suffer and I knew just who to look for. 

* * *

"Your employer." Amanda realizes and Revenant tilts his head toward her as if he had forgotten she was there. He blinks, slow and lazy like the ball hovering in his hand. 

"You get smarter every day, doc." 

She brushes off his words like the intentional barb they are, focuses on him and the preternatural stillness in his limbs. 

It is not uncommon for a client to break down while sharing a particular trauma with her. The mind may not be very good at recalling memories that it wishes to bury, but that does not mean it can't. These memories often come paired with a recollection of everything else associated with them, such as the emotions, or even more viscerally, sensations that a person felt at the time. 

Coping with this, especially if that memory has been buried deep in an attempt to block out the trauma itself, can be overwhelming. And in cases where that memory is heavily linked to pain, it isn't uncommon for the mind to bring that pain back. 

She thinks of him being forced to relive thousands of deaths after waking up to find himself in a nightmare. She thinks of him adding another death to that list, only to find that the nightmare doesn't end. She thinks of pain responses to acute psychological trauma and how that pain is very real without needing a physical cause. 

She stands and walks around her desk so that she can kneel in front of him. 

"I think we should take a break for a few minutes." 

She does not say it because she is overwhelmed. She does not say it because his story made her uncomfortable. She says it because he has shared a part of his past with her that is causing him distress and she would not be a good therapist if she expected him to continue without helping him ground himself to the present. 

"I'd like for you to look around and tell me what you see." She tells him as she listens to the slow, shallow breaths that leave his chest. He does not have lungs and he does not need to breathe, but he does so anyways and that is enough for her. 

"I think we're both a little too old for I Spy."

"Maybe so, but I'd still like you to try." She watches him look away from her, watches him take in little bits of her office. 

His eyes catch onto the fake tree she has in the corner of her room and the lights in them dim for a moment. "A plant." 

"Tell me about it." 

"It's your damn plant, you don't need me to tell you about it." 

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. He doesn't. "I'd like to hear it from you anyways." 

"It's dead." He makes a frustrated noise and taps his claws against his knee, then drags them back and replaces the gentle clink of metal against metal with a screech. She thinks of car keys dragging through a coat of paint and frowns. 

"It was never alive." 

"Of course it was, or it couldn't have died." He says and they are not talking about the plant in her office. Or really, they are not talking about the plant at all. 

"Describe it to me." 

Another screech and this time she winces. This time she notes the way the paint on his leg scratches and flakes away. She wants to take his hand so that he cannot add more marks, but he does not like to be touched and she is not sure how he would respond to her asking his permission to do so.

"It's synthetic and ugly." He says and he spits the words out like they're something rotten. As if he's offended by a plant that they may or may not be talking about. "You should have picked something nicer."

"I picked it because I don't think that I can take care of a real plant." 

"Then you should have gotten one, let it die, and replaced it like everyone else does when they want a plant." 

"But I didn't. I got a fake one because it is less work for me. I don't have to take care of it or replace it when it grows old." 

He sucks in a shuddering breath and holds it. "You can forget about it." 

And they are not talking about the plant, even though he latched onto it as the first thing he saw. She realizes quite suddenly that the plant may mean nothing to her, but it means something to him. She got a fake one because she thought it would add a bit of hospitality to her office. She got a fake because she wanted it for something, but she did not want to have to deal with managing something that could die. 

It was easier for her to have something that could not die. It was easier for her to sit it in a corner and forget it exists until it is pointed out to her. 

Just like a living plant would rely on her to keep it alive, Revenant relied on his employer for much the same. He did a job and he got paid for it, he followed orders and, knowing what little she does of the Syndicate, they likely offered him protection in exchange for his work. 

Somewhere along the line they no longer wanted to look after a living thing. Just as easy as it was for her to get a fake plant that she can forget about, it was easier for them to get a replica of him that did its job and did not require payment or protection in exchange.

She understands why he latched onto the plant as the first thing he recognized when coming back from the memory of realizing that he had been made into something that is easy to forget and easy to replace. She understands that the plant may not mean anything to her, but it means something to him. 

"What else do you see?" She asks, moves onto something other than the plant, because this realization is not as important as re-establishing his hold on the present. 

"The clock." 

"What time is it?" 

He snorts, comes back to himself a little more. "Not even I'm old enough to know how to read analog." 

"Humor me." 

"Five forty-three." 

She glances over her shoulder to check the time and raises an eyebrow at him. "Too old, huh?" 

"No one uses analog anymore." He says it like it's meant to be an insult and she supposes that it is. 

"It was a gift." She stands, returns to her desk now that his eyes have regained some of their glow "From my great great grand-whatever to my grandmother when she left the core systems." 

"She should have chucked it the first chance she got." 

She frowns because she wasn't expecting him to care enough about a worthless family heirloom enough to think it needed to be thrown away. 

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it needs maintenance and upkeep. If you can't even take care of a plant, why keep something else that needs to be looked after?" 

"It's less work than a plant." She pauses, thinks of old things that can be replaced with something newer and more convenient. She thinks of firsts that are flawed because you can never get something right on your first try. "And it has value to me." 

Amanda Linden does not consider herself to be a sentimental woman. She likes order and clear cut boundaries and knowing that things in her life serve a purpose. She has three chairs in her office --one for her, one for her client, and one for a guest-- because she does not like unnecessary clutter. She has a plant that cannot wilt or die and can add a note of hospitality with only the occasional dusting as upkeep. She has a cabinet full of random objects that may be of use in her sessions and a filing cabinet to organize everything else. 

She has an analog clock that was passed down from her great great grand-something, because her ancestors have kept it running for this long and she sees no reason to let it stop if it can still be of use to her. 

She thinks of firsts that are flawed and realizes that Revenant believes that he stopped being of use to his handlers, that he became undeserving of the care that would have kept him assimilated into the fantasy life that he had been forced to live and had been plunged into a never-ending nightmare as a result. 

Afterwards, he was angry. He has told her so many times, has reiterated just how angry he was and still is, but she knows that anger typically stems from a much more hidden emotion. It can come from envy or disgust, fear or confusion, loneliness or a keen sense of abandonment. It is easier, after all, to lash out instead of examining your feelings and their causes. 

So she thinks of him realizing that he has been betrayed by someone that he put his trust in, even if that trust was only as transactional as an agreement between employer and employee. She realizes that he became aware of his life in a haze of pain and confusion and had nothing familiar to latch on to. 

_ It all turned out to be a lie,  _ he had said. And she understands his anger a bit better, but she does understand how that led him to her. 

"I'd like to hear the rest of your story in our next session." She tells him and his eyes are bright when he looks at her. 

"You'll be here for a while." He tells her and she wonders, not for the first time, just how old he is. 

"Then a part of it." She concedes. 

"It's not going to be nicer than any of the rest of it." 

But she does not expect it to. She would not have the job that she does if her clients' stories were  _ nice.  _

"That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be told."

_ That doesn't mean that it should be forgotten,  _ she thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter didn't want to be written and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but we're making progress!
> 
> (Also apologies for any errors, it's 4 AM)


End file.
